Misophonia: Or, how I learned to know my wife is not crazy

I have a confession to make: I used to think my wife was crazy. Not lock her up and throw away the key crazy. More like, “why the hell are you freaking out” crazy.

Allow me to elaborate. Many times when I’m chewing gum, or drinking out of a straw, or simply clicking a pen, my wife will – out of nowhere – ask me to stop.

Asking might not be the right term, more like suddenly shouting. For years I would just laugh and continue on with what I was doing, I mean come on, that’s crazy.

Well, turns out it’s an actual, genuine affliction. It’s called misophonia (not to be confused with me-so-horny-a ). The NY Times recently ran a story on it and then The Today Show stole itfollowed up.

Basically there is a whole bunch of people out there who are so annoyed by the tiny noises people, animals, and objects make that they have to control their urge to either scream or smack the offending noise-maker into submission.

Who knew? Well now I do; and like my boy GI Joe always says, “knowing is half the battle”.

Related

A. Your wife is certainly not crazy
B. I had a student last year that “suffered” from this. Basically due to excessive complaints by both her and her mother, the girl was able to avoid being in a classroom 90% of the time and essentially was excused from doing any real school work. She got to have individualized instruction where she sat in a separate room with one of the secretaries (not an actual teacher) and pretended to complete her assignments. No worries though, despite the fact that she couldn’t pass a test to save her life she was still able to move on to 9th grade. Got to love our education system…